Researchers have used AI to reconstruct the rules of a board game carved into a stone found in the Dutch city of Heerlen. The team concludes that this type of game was played several centuries earlier than previously assumed.

This week we can vote in the University elections. The University Council and faculty councils are incredibly important. During the fantastic seminar on 50 years of participation that the University Council recently held, our former Rector Carel Stolker aptly said: ‘Without participation, there would…

Joanne van der Leun is Professor of Criminology.

Caroline S. Archambault (Anthropology PhD, Brown University, 2007) is an Assistant Professor at LUC. Her current research focuses on human rights, international development, and demography in sub-Saharan Africa. Topics of interest include: natural resource management, education, pastoralism, urban informal…

On 1 November 2024, the university introduced a new mobility policy, facilitated by Shuttel. Since then, we have been logging our travel (commuting and domestic business travel) and homeworking days in the Shuttel app. As agreed, we evaluated this policy after a year, and the result was positive. We…

Self-directed learning is more suitable for intermediate and advanced language learners than for beginners.

As a staff member at our faculty, you can develop your expertise further not only here, but also at a university outside the Netherlands. Through staff mobility, also called staff exchange, you can teach abroad temporarily, follow training courses, shadow colleagues (job shadowing), or gain experience…

Sarah Wolff is Professor in International Studies and Global Politics at Leiden University. Her research concentrates on EU-UK foreign and security cooperation, EU migration and asylum policies, EU-Middle East and North Africa, as well as EU’s policies on gender and religion abroad.

Judi Mesman (1974) has been a professor at Leiden University since 2009 and focuses on the study of social (in)justice with special attention to intergenerational issues at individual and institutional levels. Since 2024, she has also been appointed Distinguished Professor of Social Responsibility and…

Floris Keehnen is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology.

Leiden and South Africa have long standing historical ties in the field of mathematics. These ties have now been strengthened thanks to an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility (ICM) grant. Four researchers from Pretoria are now visiting Leiden. ‘No matter how good we are at dealing with Teams and…

Leiden University’s President of the Executive Board, Professor Annetje Ottow, has been reappointed for a second term by the Board of Governors.

Leiden University has a new Executive Board. Since 8 February 2021, Annetje Ottow has been the new President and Hester Bijl the new Rector Magnificus of the Board, while Martijn Ridderbos has continued in his role as Vice-Chairman.

ChatGPT, the text-generating chatbot, has recently become available for anyone to use. Is this artificial intelligence (AI) tool a threat to our teaching?

Prof. Sarah de Rijcke is Rector Magnificus on the Executive Board of Leiden University. Her responsibilities include teaching, research, student affairs and academic HR policy.

We asked a lot of everyone last year. The Personnel Monitor showed that the workload was high in 2022 and Covid took its toll. I therefore think everyone deserves some downtime. Time away from the daily grind.

This is a difficult time. Above all, for all those directly involved in this horrible case – unacceptable behaviour by a professor and his removal from the University – the case we went public about on 18 October and that has been reported in the media. This is painful and tough for the complainants…

Leo Lucassen is Professor of Global Labour and Migration History at the Leiden University Institute for History and director of the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. His research focuses on Global Migration History, Integration, Migration Systems, Migration Controls, Gypsies…

Moritz Jesse holds a Jean Monnet Chair at the Europa Institute Leiden.

Dr.(mult.) Andrew DJ Shield is Assistant Professor of Migration History, and affiliated with the interdisciplinary research project “Social Citizenship and Migration.” He is the chair of Leiden’s LGBT+ Network. Shield specializes in sexuality, race, and diversity in Europe since 1945. He holds two…

Francesco Walker has a Masters Degree in cognitive neuropsychology from VU Amsterdam. In 2015, he developed a proposal to study the link between eye-movement behaviour and visitor perceptions of art in a museum setting. The resulting collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam produced the first…

Eastern and Southern European countries struggle with ‘brain drain’ as skilled workers move to other EU Member States. Could restricting free movement be a legitimate and lawful way to address this trend? Researcher Martijn van den Brink will investigate the issue.

The Executive Board has appointed Mette Kamerich as the assessor and student member of the Faculty Board of the Faculty of Humanities. The appointment is for the period from 1 September 2025 to 1 September 2026, and she will therefore succeed Nova Verkerk in this role.

How did people move and form communities when human societies first shifted from hunting and gathering to farming? A new study of the Neolithic period in southwest Asia, the birthplace of agriculture, offers fresh insights.

Several Dutch universities have said they do not want foreign student numbers to grow any more in some of their degree programmes. They are reaching maximum capacity. We are also alert to this in Leiden, but I see many positive aspects to the intake of international students.

If we need funding for a project, equipment or research at the university, we automatically think of the Dutch Research Council or other grant providers. But more and more researchers are managing to connect with people who care about the university.

The more than 370 sensors that have been hung up in Leiden University buildings to count the people present will not be switched on again. The equipment will eventually be removed from the buildings.

A team of students from Leiden won the iGEM international biology contest in 2020 with their Rapidemic mobile testing kit. The kit makes it easy to detect viruses. The team has now been nominated for the Most Innovative Student in the Netherlands prize. Cast your vote and help them develop their inv…

The rising energy prices cannot have escaped anyone’s notice. They have dominated the news in recent months. As a university, we too face a big challenge as the prices continue to rise. We will all have to do our bit in the coming months, also in view of the climate crisis that we want to help resol…

I was disgusted by the recent Ongehoord Nederland broadcast on 15 September. The racist and hateful comments made by alumna Raisa Blommesteijn were, as far as I am concerned, way over the line and in my opinion also violate Article 1 of the Constitution of the Netherlands.

Academic freedom is something to be cherished. The freedom to conduct research, design courses and publish research findings as we see fit is crucial to our work.

Now the introduction weeks can go ahead as usual, the new students’ enthusiasm is overwhelming. It’s back to normal for the student associations too, having had a hard time of it during the pandemic.